


Things Not Seen

by SouthSideStory



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Depression, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Leia organa - Freeform, Past Suicide Attempt, Physical Abuse, Religious Content, Religious Fanaticism, Snoke - Freeform, college AU with student/professor reylo, got to tag those because Snoke is an abusive dick, minor Rogue One characters, minor TFA characters, professor!Rey, student!Ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 00:13:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12221814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: It can’t be love, what he’s feeling. Not the real thing anyway. It’s irrational and possessive, too unhealthy and unwanted.But whether or not this is the kind of love he’s been taught to revere, Ben thinks about Rey through the rest of Christmas break. He daydreams about his professor's smart mouth, the way her expressions always start at the curve of her lips. How she tasted when they kissed.He remembers Rey leaning in, deliberately opening her mouth to his in the fraction of a second before she pulled away. It’s probably a figment of his imagination, a consolation his memory has constructed to soothe the sting of her rejection, but Ben wants it to be true. He wants it to be true so badly that he can’t be sure it is.





	Things Not Seen

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings in the additional tags!
> 
> I had a blast writing this story for the Celebrate the Waking: the 2017 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology! This story was written for the celebration Reunion. Many thanks to my fellow mods and all the participants whose hard work made this an amazing experience.

.

.

.

**PROVERBS 4:23**

_Above all else, guard your heart,_

_for everything you do flows from it._

—

Ben takes Intro to the Hebrew Bible in the spring of his freshman year because he wants to get a headstart on his 200-level courses. Most of his classmates have no idea what their majors will be, and they change their minds every few weeks, but not Ben. It’s Religious Studies for him, which he knew before he even sent out his college applications.

Old Testament is an eight o’clock class, and because Ben likes to be early for everything, he shows up at 7:45. He unpacks a clean notebook, his freshly printed syllabus, a new black pen, his NOAB (New Oxford Annotated Bible, 4th Edition, which he despises), and his personal Bible (King James Version, which he loves).

There’s only one other student, but she looks so out of his place that he almost wonders if he’s in the wrong classroom. She’s tall and leggy, with brown hair pulled up into a high bun. Her blue jeans are nearly worn through at the knees, her sneakers battered and cheap. Scholarship student then, which is rare enough at a college like Litton. But she’s also too old for a 200-level RS class, typically populated by sophomores and particularly motivated freshmen, like him. Probably some senior who’s hoping to wile away her last semester in low-level courses while she works on her thesis.

“This is Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,” Ben says, not quite making it a question.

“It is indeed.” The girl doesn’t look up from her phone, which she’s tapping at aggressively. From the beeping sound that she hasn’t bothered to silence, he thinks she must be playing some kind of game.

She’s pretty, despite her ordinary clothes and messy hair. She also looks utterly unprepared. The only thing she has with her, apart from that noisy phone, is a thermos.

When she shrugs out of her fleece, he sees that she’s wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt underneath. Dark green, with an image of a Bible across the chest, the proud words “Jewish Zombie Saves the Universe” emblazoned across its cover.

“If you don’t like Christians, what are you doing in an Old Testament class?” he asks, before he can stop himself.

The girl finally sets down her phone, looking startled and amused. “Excuse me?” she asks. The start of a patronizing smile is tugging at the corner of her mouth, like Ben is simply the most adorable thing she’s ever seen.

He gestures at the offensive shirt and says, “You’re obviously not Christian. Probably not even an RS major.”

She snorts. “Well you’re not wrong.”

Ben doesn’t like being laughed at. Never has tolerated it well. Thirteen years of relentless bullying throughout public school will do that to a person.

“What are you then?” he asks, even though he doesn’t have to. He’d bet his tuition that she’s an atheist.

“Human,” she says, and now her smile has a sharper edge to it. Good, he’s glad to be getting to her a little. “But I suspect that that isn’t the information you were fishing for.”

Ben rolls his eyes, then busies himself with rereading the syllabus, anything to keep from talking to this obnoxious girl. He shouldn’t have engaged her anyway. Pastor Snoke always says it’s a waste of time to bother with people like that.

She goes back to playing on her phone, and they ignore each other until 7:55, when the other students start filtering in.

“Hey, Professor Jones!”

Ben looks over, and for a moment he wonders how he could have missed the professor arriving—until he realizes that the student who spoke is talking to the rude girl in the awful green shirt.

“Hi, Rachel.” She smiles and asks, “Did you have a good holiday?”

Rachel says she went on a ski trip to some resort in Colorado, but he barely registers any of that, because the girl—no, his _professor_ —smirks at him, and Ben stares at the table, cheeks scalding hot. He hasn’t been this humiliated since Todd Baxter pantsed him in the seventh grade, exposing his privates to the entire middle school during a pep rally.

_I want to die_ , Ben thinks. _I want to actually die._

He grips his left wrist, squeezes until the pressure calms him. Then he shoots his professor the nastiest look he can muster, because she just let him talk to her like she was a student. Allowed him to make an ass of himself, and now she’s wearing a self-satisfied grin, as if it’s the funniest thing in the world.

Professor Jones starts class at precisely eight o’clock, which Ben would appreciate if he didn’t dislike her so much.

“Welcome to Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,” she says. “I’m Rey Jones. You can call me by my first name, if you’d prefer. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that it will diminish my authority over you, because it doesn’t.”

She says this lightly enough that the class laughs, but Ben can tell she means every word. This woman might be young for a professor, but she’s tough as nails. How in the hell did he take her for a student?

Some suck-up who claimed the seat to the left of Professor Jones compliments her shirt. “I guess Jesus is pretty zombie-ish, huh?” he asks.

Professor Jones shrugs. “Actually, if we’re applying fantastic terms to Jesus, he’d be more properly categorized as a _lich_ than a zombie.”

Everyone besides Ben laughs again, and Professor Jones smiles. “All right, please introduce yourselves. I had most of you last year for 101, but I’d like to put names to the new faces.”

Professor Jones asks each of them to give their name, year, major, and one interesting personal fact. Ben listens to his classmates just attentively enough to discover that he’s the only freshman in this course. Evidence of his over-achievement usually makes him feel proud, but right now he’s too annoyed for that.

“Ben Solo,” he says, once it’s his turn. “Freshman. I’ll be majoring in Religious Studies as soon as I’m allowed to declare. This isn’t very interesting, but it’s a fact about myself: I’m awful at judging someone’s age.”

A subtle smile flickers across Professor Jones’s mouth before she looks to the next student.

It’s a standard first day, just discussing the objectives of the course and the texts they’ll be studying throughout the semester. At least it’s only a fifty minute class, and Professor Jones kicks them out a quarter-hour early. “Use this extra time to get started on Friday’s reading. You’ll probably need it.”

Ben stuffs his things into his bag and hurries out of the classroom. He doesn’t look back to see if his professor is laughing at him, because he’s certain that she is.

—

RS 270 quickly proves to be Ben’s most difficult class. Logic, Intro Greek, and Southern Literature are almost too easy to keep his attention, but Hebrew Bible is something else entirely.

Professor Jones assigns twice as much reading as his lit professor, and she expects her students to keep up with it. Her classes are discussion-oriented, fast-paced, and demanding. As much as he’d prefer to hate her style, Ben actually thinks Professor Jones is one of the best teachers he’s ever had. She has a way of explaining difficult ideas with great clarity while still conveying the complexity of the concepts. To her credit, she doesn’t seem to hold their conversation before the first class against him.

She’s intelligent and engaging, if blunt, and she’d probably be Ben’s favorite professor if he didn’t hate her approach to the Bible. It isn’t that Professor Jones is mean or dismissive of his beliefs, but he questions whether she has any respect at all for the texts she’s teaching. She shows him how to see the Old Testament in new ways, to better understand its books through the cultural contexts they emerged from. It’s fascinating and eye-opening—if a little galling to be utterly schooled on Biblical knowledge by a woman who probably has a stronger faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster than in God.

By the middle of the semester, he can’t help but think of her as _Rey_. Half the class calls her by her given name, just as she invited them to do, but there’s more to it than that, an urge Ben can’t quite explain, that makes him want to know her better.

—

Rey always returns his papers within a week of their due date, the margins littered with annotations in green ink. Suggestions to improve his arguments, questions, sometimes rambling comments that seem to have little direction or purpose.

She writes _A-_ at the bottom of each one, along with some note about his paper as a whole. No matter how stingy or effusive her praise is, the grade remains the same. The essay she hands back after spring break says, _Perfect._ _A-_

That’s what finally drives him to her office. He finds Rey hunched over her desk, scribbling in a notebook, the sleeves of her plaid shirt rolled up to her elbows. He expected her office to be disorganized, considering her perpetually sloppy hairstyles and wrinkled clothes, but it’s spotless and neat.

“Ben,” she says, without looking up from her work. “It’s five o’clock on a Friday. My office hours ended at three-thirty. I know you know this.”

He closes the door, takes the seat across from her, and lays his latest paper on her desk. “If my work was perfect, then why did you give me an A _minus_?”

Rey sighs, sets down her pen, and looks at him. “Because you can do better.”

“Better than perfect?” Ben asks.

“Your papers are excellent. More cohesive than mine when I was your age, and that’s saying something.” She points to the wall, at a dozen framed awards and diplomas. BA from Stanford, MA from Indiana University, PhD from Duke.

Ben shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Rey says. She leans forward, frowning. “Your arguments are well constructed, and your ideas are clearly expressed, but it’s all very _safe_. I think you know how to write to appeal to your professors’ interests—which is a great strategy if your only goal is to graduate _summa cum laude_ in three years. But if you want to develop your own voice? Not so much.”

“Are you kidding?” It takes all of Ben’s self control not to shout when he says, “I bend over backwards to write the kind of papers you’d want to see, and that’s not enough?”

Rey flips to the third page of his paper and taps the second paragraph. “Your analysis of the Pentateuch reads like a response to my last book. What’d you do, check it out from the library?”

Ben snatches his paper out of her hands, and he doesn’t care how rude that is.

“I don’t want to read a paper that’s engineered to flatter my ego,” Rey says sharply. “Next time, write about something that matters to you, instead of something that matters to me.”

Yes, he checked out her book, and yes, he read it from cover to cover, but she’s wrong about why he did that. It had nothing to do with flattering his professor, because Ben never imagined that she’d notice the influence of her writing on his own work. He’s been reading through Rey’s bibliography all semester, consuming every book and journal article that she’s authored.

Ben isn’t about to admit that, so he stands and says, “See you on Monday, Professor Jones.”

—

Ben lives in the library throughout finals week, researching and writing for six days straight, only stopping to take short naps and coffee breaks.

His asshole roommate, Armitage, orders him to stop crashing into their dorm at all hours of the night and day just to rest for thirty minutes and head back to the library. Apparently this is disrupting his beauty sleep.

If Ben wasn’t a Christian, he’d tell Armitage to fuck off. Instead, he finds a nice, out-of-the-way nook in the library and takes his naps there, curled up in a fluffy armchair.

Ben spends countless hours on his final paper for RS 270, a close examination of the Book of Job, exploring the role of suffering in faith. He’s never put so much of himself into an academic project, his passion and his convictions. If Rey slaps another A minus onto this one, he’s going to give her a piece of his mind.

—

Ben snatches the manila envelope out of his student mailbox, rips it open, and flips past all the green ink that litters the margins of his final paper, looking to the grade and the comment at the end.

_Insightful and original. Better than perfect. A+_

.

.

.

**ECCLESIASTES 1:18**

_For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;_

_the more knowledge, the more grief._

—

Going home is different when you don’t have a real home to go to.

Ben would never say as much to Pastor Snoke, but sometimes he misses his mother. Maybe it’s just nostalgia borne from separation, because when Ben lived with his mom, he spent most of his time wishing to get out from under her roof. They fought whenever she was around, which wasn’t often. Neither of his parents spent much time with him, but there’s no point in resenting his father over that, not anymore.

Ben ran away a month after he turned eighteen, and Pastor Snoke welcomed him into his family’s home, just as he promised he would.

Mom had given him far more freedom. She never kept up with where he was going or how late he’d be out, but strangely, Ben feels less confined in a house where there are rules. Pastor Snoke’s expectations may be high, and the punishments for disappointing him harsh, but at least he knows that someone is paying attention.

Ben tries not to think about his mother on the way back to Cottontown. He spends the bus ride listening to music and rereading Rey’s comments on his final paper. He traces her handwriting, fingers lingering on the uneven curves and sharp points. _You should be proud_ , she’d written on the back.

He finds Mrs. Snoke waiting for him at the bus station. She hugs him and says, “We’ve missed you so much, Ben.”

“Missed you too,” he says, before pulling away.

Mrs. Snoke makes pot roast for dinner, one of Ben’s favorite meals, and Pastor Snoke allows him to say grace. He feels less like an intruder, a lost boy interloping on a real family, when he holds hands with his mentors and asks for God’s blessing. Afterward, Mrs. Snoke washes the dishes. She always cooks and cleans, an arrangement that Ben has never felt comfortable with, because he knows what his mother would think of it.

—

Starbrook Church of Christ has the largest congregation in all of Cottontown, and sometimes Ben worries that he isn’t worthy of inheriting it.

He’s known that he’s going into ministry since he was sixteen, when Pastor Snoke saved him and offered him a place at his church. But it wasn’t until January of last year, after he ran away, that Pastor Snoke told him he’d like for Ben to lead the Starbrook congregation someday.

“You’re as good as a son to me, and you have what it takes. The drive, the talent, the uncompromising faith.” He’d looked at Ben with such confidence, and it was elating, intoxicating, for someone to believe in him like that. How could he say no?

Ben leads Bible study on Sunday mornings, teaching little kids about the Passion, the Three Wise Men, Jesus turning water into wine. This was easy last summer, because he’d wished someone had taught him these things as a child. So much would have been easier if he’d been raised in the faith instead of having to find it for himself.

It isn’t so easy this summer. He hesitates. He _doubts_. There’s only goodness in teaching a five-year-old to love her neighbors, but when Sarah asks why only boys can lead activities, he doesn’t know what to say.

The correct answer is, _Because this is how God made us._ Men lead and women follow. This is the way it’s meant to be. But Ben’s mother is a leader through and through, and he just spent a semester following the most brilliant woman he’s ever met. He wants to believe, but by the end of summer break, the right answer doesn’t feel so right anymore.

—

Some of Ben’s classmates resent his rigidity, but he has nothing on Armitage. His roommate obsessively organizes his notes, keeps his desk spotless, and maintains a system of color-coded calendars so that he’s perpetually early to all of his classes and extracurricular engagements.

On their first day back at Litton, Armitage kicks Ben’s unzipped suitcase and says, “Keep your clothes in your dresser this year. If I find dirty socks laying around they’re going straight in the trash.”

“Don’t touch my things,” Ben says.

He’d love to punch Armitage in his sneering, pink face, and maybe that’s showing, because his roommate makes some excuse about going to the library and disappears for the rest of the night.

It doesn’t matter. He’d rather be alone anyway.

—

The Litton College Catalogue is clear about the nature of RS 233: Pain, Suffering, and Death.

_A seminar that examines critical issues and problems of crisis experience involving pain, suffering, and death using various disciplinary perspectives and pedagogical methods, including interviews with healthcare professionals. Designed primarily for students considering health or human service vocations (e.g., medical professions, counseling, social work, ministry), but also of interest to others._

Ben signed up for this class last semester, when he was too enthralled by Rey’s instruction to care what she was teaching in the fall, because he knew he would take it. Now RS 233 is almost here, and he spends all night dreaming about his father. In the shower, he scratches at his left wrist until the verse tattooed there is obscured with abrasions, blood-spotted and sore. The ache of it reminds him that he’s here and alive, grounds him until he’s calm enough to pray.

When Ben walks into class fifteen minutes early, Rey says, “Back for more?”

He claims a seat two chairs down from hers and fidgets with his sleeve, tugging it lower over the bandage on his wrist. “I like a challenge.”

“Well, that’s good, because this class isn’t for the faint-hearted.”

Rey runs a hand through her hair, which is as messy as ever. That should probably be off-putting, but Ben finds it charming. It’s an effective distraction, if not a very smart one, to focus on his pretty professor instead of the father he buried five years ago.

He tries to smile. “I don’t think anyone faint-hearted would sign up for Pain, Suffering, and Death.”

Rey rests her elbows on the table and leans forward, just the slightest bit closer to him. “Are you all right?”

Ben hasn’t talked about his father with anyone besides Pastor Snoke, but for some reason it’s almost easy to tell Rey, “I’m not sure I should have signed up for this class. I think it’s going to hit too close to home, and I can’t afford to let—for personal issues get in the way of my education.”

Rey nods slowly. “If that’s how you feel, there’s still time to drop it.”

Ben’s stomach lurches, sickened into knots, but it uncoils when Rey says, “I wish you’d stay, though. Studying this sort of thing can be good in the long run. Difficult, but cathartic.”

Ben doesn’t drop the class. He tells himself it’s for the good it might do him, but the truth is, he’s slightly less afraid of facing his grief than losing the chance to see Rey three times a week for the next four months.

—

He spends the first half of sophomore year interviewing trauma surgeons and hospice nurses, reading everything from medical philosophy to _The Stranger_. It’s fascinating work, but every bit of it reminds him of his father.

Ben is usually outspoken, but he doesn’t contribute one word to the group discussion on euthanasia. Rey keeps shooting him worried looks while other students are speaking, and he thinks she might mean to corner him after class, but he doesn’t give her the chance. Ben rushes out as soon as nine-fifty hits, goes straight to the nearest bathroom, locks the door, and bends over the sink, gasping for breath. He turns on the cold water so that no one standing outside the restroom will hear him crying.

—

Here’s what Ben knows of pain, suffering, and death: there’s no reason to it, no divine plan that can possibly explain why his father had to die slowly and painfully before his forty-ninth birthday.

He remembers the blisters on Dad’s chest, where radiation treatments had burned his skin raw; the wet, rattling sound of his father’s breathing; the blood he left on napkins when he coughed; statistics about his lung function and the size of his tumors, numbers and scans that never offered any hope. Ben remembers asking Mom what DNR meant, how the smile she gave him trembled when she said it was short for _do not resuscitate_.

Pastor Snoke has explained the mysteriousness of God’s mercy a thousand times. Before his baptism, Ben searched inward for answers, and since then he’s read enough Christian philosophy on the problem of evil that he could write a dissertation on it. He’s grasped at every straw, and for awhile, Pastor Snoke’s promises gave him the comfort he needed to breathe. But no explanation is comforting anymore, and Ben doesn’t know what to do.

—

When he doesn’t turn in a final paper, he receives an email from Rey, warning him that his grade will decrease by ten percent every day that it’s late. He ignores her, and she sends another email telling him to come to her office. If he doesn’t turn in this paper, he’s going to lose his scholarships, Pastor Snoke’s patronage, and his home.

_Good_. At least if he drops out, there’ll be no one left to miss him, and it’s not as though he deserves any better.

Ben shuts down his laptop and takes a nap.

He doesn’t drag himself out of bed until lunchtime the next day. Baked chicken has never been less appealing, but he’s starving and food is food. Three bites in, Ben remembers feeding his father his last meal, not that he’d known it for what it was at the time. Now he can hear winter wind rattling the window frames, the clank of silverware hitting ceramic plates. Chatter, laughter, and arguments buzz around him, all of it rising toward the vaulted ceiling and echoing around the refectory.

He leaves his plate where it is and goes outside, into flurrying snow. Ben walks slowly, tries to stay calm, but he can’t breathe and all he can think is that he has to get out of this school, out of this town, out of this place, out of _here_ —

He barely stops short of knocking over Rey. She has to grab his arm to keep from slipping on the icy sidewalk, and he wishes that he could feel the warmth of her touch, but there are too many layers between them. She’s always beautiful, but with her nose ruddy and the tips of her ears hidden under a grey hat she looks girlish too, more like the student he mistook her for the day they met.

Ben wants to touch her, hold her, kiss her, and it isn’t the sudden desire that surprises him; what surprises him is that this desire isn’t sudden at all, and he’s been lying to himself for almost a year.

Rey looks up at him, frowning. “Ben? Are you all right?”

He wants to answer, but his voice feels stuck, caught at the base of his throat. When she pulls away, panic digs its way into his chest, squeezing his lungs until he grabs her shoulders and says, “ _Don’t_.”

Rey’s eyes are wide, her expressive mouth slack, wind-chafed cheeks flushing from pink to red. But she stops, stays still under his hands.

Ben lets go of her and steps away. He’s hot all over, must be blushing from his hairline to his toes. It’s from embarrassment, mostly, but yearning too, and that only makes the embarrassment worse. He runs away, cutting across the lawn to the wooded copse behind the refectory, then further, until he reaches the labyrinth. It’s nothing special, just a circular pathway made up of frost-glazed stones that twist and twine around each other, but he’s come here to pray in the past.

Now he’s breathing hard, more from cold and anxiety than exertion, and he can’t find the focus to reach out to God right now. He sits at the wooden bench, rests his elbows on his knees, and bends forward, lacing his fingers together over the back of his head. He breathes deeply and picks out five things he can hear, the way his high school therapist taught him to do: snow-bearing wind, the crunch of icy grass beneath his feet, chirping birds, some skittering creature in the woods, his own restless breathing. Then four things, then three, then two, then—Rey’s voice, calling his name.

Ben sits up, rubbing his gloved knuckles over his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

Rey freezes, looking more confused than concerned now, like she hadn’t stopped until this moment to consider the wisdom of running after him. She stands straighter, steadier, and says, “You looked like you might be… unsafe. I only want to make sure you’re all right.”

“Unsafe?” Ben grasps his left wrist, at the tattoo of Hebrews 11:1 that hides under his sweater sleeve. The verse stretches halfway to his elbow, inking over the scar underneath. “I’m not planning to off myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He’d hoped to deter her with crudeness, but Rey crosses her arms over her chest and says, “That’s exactly what I’m worried about. You’ve seemed depressed for months, you never turned in your final paper, and now—”

Ben shrugs. “And now I’m running off behind school buildings to cry like a little boy. Got it. Your concern is duly noted, Professor Jones.”

“If you need help, there are counselors you can talk to—”

“What good is talking going to do?” He shakes his head, pulls at his sleeve, and whispers, “Talking won’t bring him back.”

Rey takes a careful, half-step toward him. “Who won’t it bring back?”

“My dad.” Ben makes himself smile, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to break down again. “He signed a DNR after his last bout in the hospital, let a bunch of nurses shoot him up full of morphine, and died two weeks later. I was there when it happened. I _let_ it happen. I just—just stood there and watched him die—”

“No,” Rey says. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

There’s an impossible softness in her eyes, sympathy bleeding into pity. Looking at him this way is the cruelest thing she could have done, and it drives Ben to his feet.

“I was fine before I met you! I had it figured out, all the answers I needed. Losing him only meant saying goodbye for now, not forever, and now I don’t know what to believe.”

His insides have been turned outward, every nerve in his body raw and exposed. He wants to get away, wants to free himself of this pain. Ben goes to Rey, stands so close to her that he doesn’t feel like a student anymore. Only a man, strong and tall enough to tower over a woman he wants to touch. It can’t even the playing field, but it creates enough of an illusion for him to pretend that the imbalance between them doesn’t matter.

Rey’s gaze darts up and down the length of his body, like she’s assessing him. Ben can’t tell whether or not she’s trying to evaluate a threat, so when he leans down he does it cautiously, gently, giving her plenty of time to stop this if that’s what she wants.

She makes a soft noise when he kisses her, then gasps as he runs his hands down her back, her waist, her hips. She tastes like nothing Ben can place, and he wonders if all kisses feel this way, like he’s drunk (or maybe awake) for the first time—

Rey tears herself away and wipes at her swollen lips with the heel of her hand. She’s shivering, shaking her head, saying frantic, regretful things that all mean this was a mistake.

Ben bites his lip, but there’s nothing of her taste left there. Any trace of their kiss has already faded from his mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t thinking straight.”

He walks away before Rey can challenge any of his lies, and he isn’t surprised when she doesn’t follow.

—

One week into Christmas break, Ben checks his final grades. He expects to see his first academic failure, but instead he finds that he received an A- in Pain, Suffering, and Death. Ben knows that it’s only a misplaced apology, or possibly a bribe for his silence, but he hopes that Rey simply thought he deserved to pass.

.

.

.

**I CORINTHIANS 13:4**

_Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud._

—

It can’t be love, what he’s feeling. Not the real thing anyway. It’s irrational and possessive, too unhealthy and unwanted.

But whether or not this is the kind of love he’s been taught to revere, Ben thinks about Rey through the rest of his break. He daydreams about her smart mouth, the way her expressions always start at the curve of her lips. How she tasted when they kissed. He only risks jerking off in the shower, where the noise of running water will cover his gasps, and when he touches himself he pictures Rey. Her long legs wrapped around his waist, her head thrown back to expose the pale curves of her throat, the sounds she would make if he pleased her.

He thinks Rey might have kissed him back. Ben remembers her leaning in, deliberately opening her mouth to his in the fraction of a second before she pulled away. It’s probably a figment of his imagination, a consolation his memory has constructed to soothe the sting of her rejection, but he wants it to be true. He wants it to be true so badly that he can’t be sure it is.

Not that it matters. Even if some part of her does want him, Rey made her feelings clear enough at the labyrinth.

At first Ben prays for freedom from this infatuation that’s buried itself under his skin. When that fails, he prays for the wisdom and patience to move past it in time, but if anything, he only feels less wise and more impatient as the days between Christmas and the New Year crawl by.

When Ben forgets to say _amen_ after Pastor Snoke’s eloquent grace, he gets slapped. Shame shivers along the ridges of his spine, but Ben swallows down the impulse to hit back, to argue, to cry.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Pastor Snoke cups Ben’s cheek, the same cheek he struck, his touch gentle now.

“I know you are,” he says, smiling. “Now eat your dinner.”

—

Ben wakes with the smell of cigarette smoke in his nose, the sour ash scent that never quite faded from the living room curtains, even years after Dad quit smoking. He dreamed of blistered skin and bloody napkins. Of his father’s tumors, showing silver and nebulous against black X-ray film, like clouds drifting across a night sky. Innocuous, almost pretty, for such ugly, dangerous things.

He misses Rey.

Ben speaks to his blank, empty ceiling for ten minutes, begging for forgiveness and help, when something unwelcome tugs low in his belly. Uncertainty, mistrust.

“Are you even there?” He has to whisper the question. It’s too dangerous to give much voice to.

Ben hears nothing, feels nothing. So he does what he always does when doubt creeps in. He slides his fingers along the tattoo that marks his left arm, mouthing the words without looking at them. This ritual eases his fears, even if it doesn’t bring much reassurance that someone is listening.

—

On the last Sunday before going back to school, Pastor Snoke takes Ben behind the church and says, “You’re distracted, falling down on your responsibilities here and at school. I know you almost lost your fellowship because your volunteer hours barely met the minimum requirements. That isn’t acceptable.”

Ben knows that Pastor Snoke has connections at Litton. It’s half the reason he was accepted into such a high-profile school when his high school GPA was less than stellar, thanks to his disastrous freshman year. He wonders whether it was a snitch from financial aid or the Casterfo Fellowship committee who told Pastor Snoke about his rocky semester.

“You’re right. I’ll do better, it’s just—” Ben resists the urge to shrug, because Pastor Snoke hates it when he doesn’t stand up straight. “I had a difficult few months.”

“I don’t want excuses. I want improvement,” Pastor Snoke says. He grasps the back of his neck in a gesture that might be fatherly if it wasn’t hard enough to hurt. “If you hadn’t lost focus, you could have found the guidance you needed to do well. The Lord never gives us more than we can bear, Ben.”

_Then I wish I wasn’t capable of bearing so much._

“Of course. I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

Pastor Snoke’s frown deepens. He looks upward meaningfully and says, “It isn’t my disappointment you should be worried about.”

Ben nods as respectfully as he can manage, since it seems he can’t say anything right today.

—

He’d been disappointed last semester when he couldn’t fit any of Rey’s classes into his spring schedule. Now Ben is thankful that his only RS class is Living Religions with Professor Îmwe. Advanced Greek and Astronomy are a welcome respite after the academic hell he went through last fall, although Krennic’s class makes him want to rip his hair out. It’s more his professor’s attitude that bothers him than the subject matter, but Ben still hates sitting through ninety minutes of poli sci every Tuesday and Thursday.

At the end of January, Ben goes to Rey’s office. She’s there, naturally. She works so much that it makes him wonder what kind of life she has outside of this college.

It’s the first time he’s seen her in more than passing since the day they kissed. Her hair is in a loose braid instead of its usual bun, and she never bothered to take off her coat, despite the space heater running in the corner.

Ben walks inside without knocking, points to the heater, and says, “Those aren’t allowed on campus. It’s pretty irresponsible for you to have one.”

Rey shoves a stack of papers into a folder, staring steadily at her desk. “Did you need something?”

Ben pulls the door shut behind him. He takes three deep breaths, sends a quick prayer heavenward, and says, “We should talk about what happened at the labyrinth.”

She finally looks up. “No, we shouldn’t. It’s better left alone, and—well, I assume you won’t be taking more of my classes anyway.”

“Why would you think that?” Ben asks.

Rey stands up and lays her hands flat on her tidy desk. “Because it’s not appropriate.”

Ben grips the edge of her desk and bows low enough that, if he worked up the courage, he could kiss her again.

“What I feel for you isn’t appropriate, whether I’m in your classes or not,” Ben whispers.

Rey straightens, backs away from her desk, and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She moves with the swift clumsiness of restless fear, so far from the confidence and composure she usually exudes. Rey is a brilliant teacher and an accomplished scholar, but under that, she’s just a person. A regular person like any other, and he’s been an idiot for keeping her on a pedestal.

“We’re not going down this path,” Rey says. “It would only hurt both of us.”

His desires are unwise, but maybe not unreturned, and if Rey wants him back there’s a _chance_ —

“So you don’t want what happened between us to compromise my education, but you’re excluding me from your classes, which are the best in the whole department.” He walks around the desk and closes in on her space until she’s backed against a bookshelf. “In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s going to compromise my education.”

The top of Rey’s head barely brushes his chin, and her soft breath warms his throat. Still, her voice comes out firm, almost harsh, when she says, “I’m sorry, Ben, I am, but I don’t see you like that. You’re a great student and a—a bright kid—”

He cups Rey’s face between his hands, strokes his thumb over her cheek, and watches her gaze flicker toward his mouth. She bites her own lip, then turns away, breaths coming in short, sharp pants.

“You’re not as good at lying to yourself as you’d like to be,” Ben says.

Rey pushes him, and the shock of being struck makes him stumble.

“Get out,” she says. “Get out, and don’t come back.”

She sounds more broken than fierce, but he does as he’s told.

Later, alone in his bed, Ben realizes that he always follows wherever Rey leads him, and no matter how much he’d like to, he can’t get around the distance between her authority and his. She’s ten years older than him, smarter, better educated, with the power to ruin his future if she wants to. No matter how fiercely they disagree, in the end, he dances to whatever song Rey plays. Maybe that’s the problem.

—

Ben has managed to get through nearly two years at Litton without making a single friend. It wasn’t difficult; he’s always had to work to earn anyone’s affection or interest, and until college, his peers seemed to enjoy making his life hell. At least here he’s mostly ignored.

He can’t stand Armitage, and Armitage returns the (lack of) sentiment. But by virtue of sharing a room, they spend more time with each other than anyone else, and they agree to live together at East Village apartments next year. Better the devil you know, Ben supposes.

They’re both awake at three o’clock in the morning on a Thursday in April when Armitage closes his business textbook, pulls a fifth of whiskey from the bottom drawer of his desk, and asks, “Do you ever drink, Father Solo?”

“I’m going to be a minister, not a priest,” Ben says, but for once Armitage’s ribbing only makes him laugh. “And no, I don’t drink.”

Armitage takes a glass from the pretentious shelf of dishes next to his mini-fridge and fills it with whiskey. “Shocker.”

“I used to,” Ben says. “I used to drink all the time. Too much.”

The look Armitage gives him isn’t quite one of respect, but it’s close. “Really? I never would’ve guessed you for a budding alcoholic. Were you a man-whore too?”

Ben closes his laptop, turns to his roommate, and says, “No. I didn’t want to be close to anyone. I just wanted to…”

Disappear. He wanted to disappear, but even if Armitage is being decent for once, Ben can’t share that truth.

Armitage turns up his glass and drinks half the whiskey in one go without even flinching. “Well, here’s a piece of advice, for whenever you manage to foist your virginity off on someone: fucking doesn’t require intimacy.”

Ben ends up drinking whiskey too, then passing out. He wakes up with a dull headache after a night of dreamless sleep, feeling empty, wrung-out, and blessedly calm.

—

Ben goes to his first Greek party the weekend before finals, where he avoids getting wasted by winning game after game of beer pong. Even when he spent half his time drunk or hungover, Natty Lite was never his drink of choice, and his aim has always been excellent.

His beer pong partner is Jyn, a junior who’s famous for calling Professor Krennic a cunt in the middle of the refectory last year.

Her boyfriend Cassian has been stalking the edges of the party for the last hour, clearly pissed off except for when he looks at Jyn. Ben gestures at him and asks, “How long have you two been together?”

“Ages. For better or worse.” She makes a perfect shot. The ping pong ball sinks into a red cup at the opposite side of the table with a satisfying _plop_. Bodhi—another RS major who Ben knows in passing—drinks his beer, pulls a face, and tells Jyn in the most polite way possible that she’s the worst friend he’s ever had.

Ben considers flirting with Jyn. He’s heard from two-hundred-pound football players that Cassian isn’t one to fuck with, and he hasn’t been in a fight since Pastor Snoke saved him. It might feel good to be hurt, even better to hurt someone else.

After their third win, Jyn claps him on the shoulder and says, “If I keep playing with you I’ll never get drunk.”

He smiles at her, cool enough to be on the safe side of friendly. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

Ben drinks soda for the next hour, doesn’t start any fights, and ignores Jessika Pava when she flirts with him. He leaves while the party is still going strong to walk around campus. Loneliness makes him feel even more disappointingly sober, so Ben goes to the labyrinth. The woods are green and lively, full of the impending promise of summer, but he can see this place covered in frost, can almost taste the sting of winter wind.

It isn’t his fragile faith that held him back at the party, because there was little temptation to resist. Ben isn’t particularly interested in getting drunk, or fighting, or testing out Armitage’s love-life advice with a girl he barely knows. All he truly wants is Rey.

—

Ben should have declared his major months ago, but he’s been putting it off. When he finally files the appropriate paperwork, he also picks up a blue form for requesting an advisor change. Now that he’s officially a Religious Studies major, he needs a professor from the RS department to mentor him.

Rey blushes when he shows up at her office with the request form. They small talk for a minute, the most they’ve spoken to each other in three months, but then she says, “You know I can’t be your advisor.”

He smiles, as brightly as he’s capable of. “Of course you can. You’re the best.”

“My credentials have nothing to do with this. Try Professor Îmwe, or maybe Malbus—”

“Malbus hates me. Îmwe is great at his job, but he teaches world religions, and I’m going into ministry. You’re an expert on the history of Biblical interpretation, American religions, and modern theology. Which makes you the perfect advisor for me.”

“Ben…” Rey looks at him with such softness that it sends an ache through his chest and heat to his belly.

He shrugs. “I don’t see the problem.”

Her softness turns sharp in an instant, and she says, “Yes you do. Don’t be obtuse.”

“I’m not being obtuse,” Ben says. “But I am hoping you could clear something up for me. I should’ve failed 233 and lost half my scholarships, but instead, here I am with my semester paid for and my GPA intact. Harassing you about being my advisor, because you won’t talk to me for any other reason.”

The silence between them grows thick, heavy with the gravity of what they’re saying—and not saying. Ben chews the inside of his cheek, waiting. Hoping.

“I’m sorry,” Rey says, so low and small that her voice would be lost if not for the stillness of this room.

“For which part?”

“I gave you that grade because you’re one of the brightest students I’ve ever had, and you didn’t deserve to lose your education over grief.” She glances down at her desk. “And I’ve been avoiding you because it’s the best thing I can think to do in a situation where nothing seems right.”

Ben counts five things he can see in this office. Bookshelves crammed into a space far too small for them. Rey’s degrees, decorating the only free wall. Fountain pens and folders scattered across her desk. A flowerpot in the window, housing a plant that’s either dead or very neglected. And Rey, so beautiful with her cheeks flushed, eyes greener and glassier than usual.

“You knew I was going to kiss you. You knew, and you let me do it.”

Rey is looking at him, and at least she has enough courage, enough respect for him, to meet his eyes when she says, “Yes.”

Running away hasn’t served him very well so far, so maybe it’s time to stand his ground.

_Now or never._

“Let’s see each other,” Ben says. “No more dancing around this thing, trying to fight off something I want, and that I’m pretty sure you want too.”

“Do you realize what you’re suggesting? The consequences we could face if we got found out?” Rey picks up a pen and fidgets with it, turning it over and over. “I’d lose my job. The administration would watch you like a hawk for the rest of your time here, and most of your classmates would crucify you.”

Ben can’t keep a grin off of his face, because she isn’t saying no. It almost hurts to smile so widely. “Then we’ll be careful.”

Rey opens her mouth, but says nothing, and he can see it, the nervousness that’s keeping her quiet, and he can’t—he just _can’t_ let her back out when she’s so close to giving in. Ben stands up, walks around the desk, and gets on his knees before Rey. He feels ridiculously like a man about to propose.

“Please.” Ben grasps her hips, then wraps his arms around her waist. Pulls her closer, to the edge of her seat. She’s a tall woman, but light. Easy to manhandle.

Rey grabs him by the front of his shirt, and Ben scrambles to his feet. He doesn’t let go of Rey, doesn’t stop touching her even once, as she stands, hops up onto her desk, and pulls him down for a kiss.

It’s wet and messy, all hunger, tongues, and sharp teeth. She’s biting at his lips as much as kissing him, like she means to take him apart one piece at a time.

—

They made it to Rey’s apartment, even into bed, but not out of all their clothes. Ben’s pants and boxers are tangled around his knees, his shirt unbuttoned. Pressed flat against the mattress with Rey on top of him, he feels frantic and overcome, drunk on the taste of her, the sight of her undressed from the waist down, riding him.

He slides his hands under Rey’s shirt and bra to grasp her breasts. They’re small, soft, her nipples peaked under his hands. He moans, rocks up harder, faster, meeting her movements. Each thrust draws a high, keening noise from Rey, quiet but desperate. And he loves all of it: pleasing her, feeling the warmth and wetness of her sex around his cock, watching her thighs work as she takes what she wants from him.

Rey looks down at him like she’s needed this every bit as much as he has, and it’s good, so much, too much—

“Wait,” Ben hisses, but he can’t stop lifting his hips, bucking up into her. “You’ve gotta slow down, or I’ll—I’m—”

“It’s okay, I want it, I want to watch you come.” Rey pulls her shirt over her head, then her bra, so he can see her, all of her, while she—

Ben bites his knuckles to keep from shouting, but he still moans loud enough that her neighbors can probably hear it through these thin walls. He can’t care, because he’s close, so close, and then he’s there. Lost under Rey, buried inside her, while bliss hits him in waves. He can hear her whimpers beneath his own, goading him on, coaxing him to the end until he’s wrung out, boneless and spent.

The room hasn’t quite settled around him again when Rey falls to the bed by his side.

“How was that?” she asks, breathless.

By the confidence in her voice, he thinks she already knows. Which is good, because all Ben can muster the intelligence to say is, “I don’t have the words for it.”

Rey laughs. “Well that’s a first.”

Then she nods in the direction of his groin, and says, “You might want to get rid of that condom.”

“Right.”

Ben would rather not think about the condom. He hadn’t known how the hell to put it on, which clearly wasn’t lost on Rey, although she had the tact not to comment on it. He goes to the bathroom, throws the condom away, and cleans himself up.

He undresses before climbing back into bed, and has to smile at the soft, stupid expression that steals over Rey’s face when she sees him naked.

“You’re really something else, you know that?” Her voice breaks on the question, and it might be as satisfying as the sex to witness the effect he’s having on her.

She lets him hold her close and play with her hair. It’s soft and fine, almost wispy, and prone to snagging when he runs his fingers through it.

“Did you come?” Ben asks.

Rey shakes her head, then nudges his calf with her foot. “I’m not too worried about it. I expect you’ll make sure I get mine before the night’s through. You are an overachiever after all.”

“Well that’s certainly true.” Ben tries to smile, but it feels weak.

“What is it?” Rey asks. “You look sad now.”

He untangles his fingers from her hair. “I don’t want to be a disappointment.”

Rey sits up, cradles his face between her hands, and looks at him with such steady, blazing attention that as much as he wants to look away, he can’t.

“Ben. Listen to me: there’s nothing disappointing about you. Not one thing.”

He should pull away. Making love once, holding each other, basking in the smallest sliver of her affection—that’s all it takes for Rey to claim every part of him that matters.

This is foolish and selfish, no good for either of them, but Ben thinks maybe, despite that, what he’s feeling could be something like love anyway.

.

.

.

**ECCLESIASTES 6:7**

_Everyone’s toil is for the mouth, yet the appetite is never satisfied._

—

Ben barely studies for his last exam because he goes to Rey’s apartment every night he can spare. They spend most of that time making love, then lying together in the aftermath, getting to know one another while they share tender touches and quiet words.

The night before he leaves for Cottontown, they’re entwined in a pile of inside-out clothes on the living room floor, breathless and grinning at each other.

Ben props himself up on an elbow, leans over Rey, and says, “Tell me something about yourself. I want to know you better.”

She laughs. “You already know me as well as anyone does.”

“I do?” He almost laughs with her, but then Ben notices that the smile around her mouth is empty in her eyes.

Rey touches the crook of his elbow, slides her fingers along the skin of his left forearm, following the lines of his tattoo and the scar underneath it.

“If I share something personal with you, will you tell me about this?” she asks.

Ben kisses her forehead. “Sure.”

It isn’t as if the worst of it (of him) isn’t in plain sight anyway.

“My parents dumped me at a hospital in Arizona when I was six. They left me there.” Rey looks up at the ceiling, the smallness of her voice fading into the shadows. “They left me, and they never came back.”

“That’s terrible,” Ben tells her, because it is, and because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Rey shrugs, still looking upward. “I guess so.”

He imagines Rey as a little girl, lost and alone until someone found her. Lost and alone even now, maybe, if he’s the closest thing to a friend that she has.

“Your turn,” Rey says.

Ben lies on his back beside her. He thinks there might be a water stain on the ceiling, but with only the waning blue of twilight to see by, he can’t be sure.

“I missed my dad. Missed him all the time, so I found ways not to think about him. I bullied kids who were smaller than me, just to have someone to hurt. Then I started fights with seniors, to get someone to hurt me. I drank all the time, so much that even my mom noticed. And she wasn’t—” Ben scrubs a hand over his face, counts five things he can hear, and says, “She was a good mom, but she was busy. Always so busy, dealing with a million things that were more important than me, and after Dad died, she found enough distractions to keep her even busier.”

“Like you did,” Rey whispers.

“ _No_ , not like me,” Ben says. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ve guessed where this story’s going. Nothing helped, not in the long-run. So I tried to do something that would end the pain for good.”

He doesn’t tell her about bleeding all over his bathroom floor, the flood gushing from his wrist, so bright and warm that it terrified him. He was too scared to hurt himself further, but frozen, determined not to call for help. He sat there, curled up on the tile, turning his white bathroom red red red, until his mother found him.

“Why’d you tattoo over your scar?” Rey asks. “To hide it?”

Ben shakes his head. “I tried to kill myself because I was hopeless. So when I found my faith, I wanted to cover up my scar with the thing that gave me hope again.”

Rey scoots closer to him, wraps an arm around his waist, and says, “That’s beautiful.”

_No, it’s stupid_ , Ben thinks, but he keeps that to himself. His ability to believe has become a meager thing, too shameful to share, even with Rey.

In the silence between them, Ben offers his hand. Rey takes it, and they stay this way for a long while. Lovers who only love with their bodies, holding hands in the darkness.

—

A year ago, having sex before marriage sounded impossible, if tempting, and now he’s done it. It isn’t until he’s back at Pastor Snoke’s that Ben feels the gravity of his choices. He learned how to fear God in this house, and how to fear Pastor Snoke even more. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, because respect begins with awe, awe requires intimidation, and intimidation is born through fear. But Ben’s fear of God has waned with the awe he used to feel, and without enough respect for the path he set himself on, he simply doesn’t care enough to keep away from Rey.

At church, he’s an imposter among the faithful, the sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing that Matthew 7:15 warns about. It’s easier to see the hateful lies he swallowed, now that he better understands why he was so hungry for them.

Pastor Snoke reads Psalms 139:13— _for you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb_ —and when he condemns the women who end their pregnancies, Ben thinks of Rey at age seventeen. Six weeks along and living out of her car. She told him, in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, that she had an abortion, went to college, and tried not to look back.

Not so long ago, Ben believed everything Pastor Snoke is saying now.

He stands, runs out of the church as fast as his legs will carry him, and finds a quiet place behind the church to hide. It keeps him from vomiting in the front pew, but then he thinks of what will await him at Pastor Snoke’s house. Hours in his locked room, or maybe a simple slap to the face. It’s too late to go home, and he can’t risk losing his place at Litton, his place beside Rey—

_Help me please help me I can’t do this alone somebody help me_ —

Ben doesn’t know if he’s praying to his father or God, but maybe if he calls out loud enough and long enough, someone will answer.

—

He doesn’t have to go to church the next week, because the bruise on his cheek still hasn’t healed.

Ben spends all of Sunday morning writing a letter to his mother. It starts with _I’m sorry_ and ends with _please forgive me_ , but he can’t bring himself to deliver it. His home is only five miles away, but with the blame and betrayal he’d have to cross to get there, it might as well be a thousand.

He never has been brave. It’s a hard truth that Ben accepted years ago, after he had to look away from his dying father, and in the blink of an eye, missed the most important moment of his life.

—

Ben talks to Rey on the burner phone that he bought right after finals. He hides in his closet and keeps his voice pitched low, feeling more like a child than a twenty-year-old man.

“I miss you,” he whispers.

“I…” He hears Rey take an unsteady breath, her voice two hundred miles away, yet right in his ear. “I miss you too.”

Ben chews his lip, worrying the bruised flesh between his teeth so that the sting ties him to the present. “So, what are you teaching next semester? I’m taking Malbus again for—”

“I don’t want to talk about work,” Rey says, snappish enough that its sharpness rings in Ben’s ears.

“Well then what do you want to talk about?” he asks. “Because it doesn’t seem like you want to talk about _us_ either, and those are the only two things we have in common.”

“Don’t be dramatic. It just seems—it’s not right for us to mix _this_ up with—” She sighs, then her voice lowers, softens, when she says, “I don’t want to confuse you. There’s what we’re doing… and then there’s what we are to each other. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Their affair and their relationship lead to the same thing for him. He isn’t a student fucking his professor; he’s just a man making love to the woman he’s devoted to. But he only says, “Yeah, of course. I get it.”

—

“I expect better from you this year,” Pastor Snoke says. “Don’t let anything steer you away from the right path, no matter how tempting it is. If you’re not vigilant, it’s easy to be seduced by the world, to forget what needs to be done. Remember my lessons.”

Ben nods, fidgeting with his keys—keys to a gently used Toyota that Pastor Snoke gave him a week ago.

“I’ll do my best. And you won’t have any reason to hear about me this year, I promise.”

The drive back to Litton stretches on and on, the same highway view repeating a thousand times. The sidelines broken by meadows, cornfields, and roadside woods, dotted with billboards for churches, jewelry companies, fast-food restaurants. Plain black promises on white canvas claim that THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH, half a mile down from a Hustler Hollywood.

By the time he reaches his school, Ben needs a shower and a nap, but the first thing he does, even before unloading his belongings into his new student apartment, is search out Rey. Her office is locked and silent, but it’s easy enough to find her in the library, wandering through the stacks with three books already under her arm.

She’s beautiful. Hair pulled up into three buns today, something new and a little silly that makes her look younger than thirty.

He pretends to examine a book near her and whispers, “Go to the restroom down the hall and wait for me.”

There’s a smile that Rey is trying to hold back, but it shows at the corners of her eyes. “Well hello to you too, darling.”

Ben pulls out a heavy book on the phenomenology of religion and flips to a page on Eliade. It’s boring, but reading it gives him something to think about besides the ache settling between his legs, tightening his throat, beating in his chest. Lust, homesickness, love. He glances around, checking for students that he already knows won’t be there.

“I need to kiss you,” Ben whispers. “Need to get my mouth on all of you.”

Five minutes later, they’re locked in the third-floor bathroom, kissing and biting at each other, pulling at clothes. Ben holds Rey against the wall, one arm braced over her head, the other unbuttoning her loose jeans. She’s a tall woman, but when they’re pressed close this way, both on their feet instead of in bed, she seems small, slight. Easy to have however he wants, so long as she wants it too.

Rey shivers when he tugs at her zipper, a shiver that turns to steady trembling as he yanks her pants and plain cotton underwear down her hips and thighs, lets them drop to her ankles.

He gets on his knees, and he loves it, loves everything about this. The sharp jerk of Rey’s fingers in his hair as she guides him closer, the whimpers she muffles around her own knuckles. The mindless calm that settles over him as he lets her take charge, giving orders and pulling his hair and bucking against his mouth. He loves the taste and smell of her, the heat and salt musk on his tongue. Wet, so wet, even more so as he unravels her with each lick, all slick warmth across his mouth and around his fingers, crooked inside her. He feels it when she comes, the quivering of her sex that he’s touching from within.

Then he pulls away, climbs to his feet, wipes the mess from his mouth with his shirtsleeve, and turns Rey around so that she’s facing the wall.

“Do you have—?”

“Yeah. I made a pitstop on the way here.”

Ben unfastens his jeans, gets them down to his knees, tangled with his boxers, and pulls a condom from his pocket. _God bless Hustler_ , he thinks, and he doesn’t even have time to feel guilty about it before he’s inside her, and then that’s all he cares about. Rey, pressed flat against the wall, letting out the quietest of whimpers every time he thrusts. Rey, moaning his name again and again, telling him to fuck her, to have her harder, faster, to make her feel it tomorrow.

_I love you_ , he thinks, when he’s close, when he comes, when he’s falling down from the high of pleasure. And later still, after they’ve straightened their clothes and parted ways, and he’s lying in his bed alone that night, he thinks it again: _I love you. I love you so much that it’s tearing me apart_.

He wishes Rey was here, to sleep beside him. That he could wake up next to her each morning, until he’s earned the intimacy of her heart as much as the intimacy of her body. That he could fall asleep in her arms at night, taking turns being each other’s protectors.

It’s becoming misery, to need someone so fully, and be needed back only in the basest, barest possible way.

—

Ben wonders how long they can keep this up. By December, he can hardly stand it. He turns twenty-one just before finals, and Rey promises to take him for a drink when the new semester starts. Plans for something like a date sustain him through his exams, distracting but elating, and he’s motivated like never before to do well.

He aces every exam, doesn’t even need to see his grades to know it, and when he tells Rey, she laughs. Throws her arms around his neck and says, “You really are brilliant. It’s a shame how well you know it, though.”

During Christmas break, he’s lost. Divergent schedules and the need for discretion keep them apart more often than not, but at least at school he has the privilege of seeing Rey. Even if it’s only a glimpse of her, walking around campus or grabbing a meal in the refectory (where she always goes back for second helpings of the dishes she likes).

When they’re together, he needs her so fiercely that it feels like something inside of him, something deep-seated and important, is being pulled from its place. Ripped out and exposed, made raw before this woman who owns him. And when they’re apart, he aches. That same part, that necessary piece of self, hurts to be away from Rey.

But she doesn’t feel the same. It’s obvious from the reservation he often feels behind her touch outside of bed, the gentle way she always cues him to leave her home before sunrise, that Rey’s desires run shallower than his own. She’s glad to use him and be used, but nothing more.

And Ben knows, as much as he doesn’t want to, that this isn’t sustainable, could never stand the test of time. An uneven love will eventually overbalance.

—

It ends as abruptly as it started, on a cold night in April.

A storm rages outside, and a clap of thunder startles Ben awake. Muzzy-headed and still boneless from lovemaking, it takes him a moment to register that Rey isn’t beside him. He climbs out of bed, pulls on his jeans, and wanders through her apartment, calling her name.

He finds her outside, on the patio, grasping the railing with a white-knuckled grip. As if that hold is the only thing that might keep her from hauling herself right over the balustrade and falling three stories to the pavement below. Ben grabs Rey by the arm and yanks her around, because he can’t tolerate it, seeing her lean so close to the edge like that.

Lightning flashes, a fork of purple-white fire branching across the sky, illuminating the whole darkness, and the whole of them, standing half-naked in the watchful night.

She’s crying. He’s never seen Rey cry before, and he knows, even before he asks, “What’s wrong?” that this is it. This is the end.

“I can’t—” She sniffs, runs a hand through her soaked hair, and says, “I can’t keep doing this, Ben. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

The wind is cold on his skin, ferrying a thousand icy raindrops that beat against his body, that could eat him alive, and for a moment, that’s all he can feel. The wind, the rain, the cold.

Then the rest of it hits, and he runs inside, to get away from Rey more than to get away from the storm. He pulls on his shirt and shoes, grabs his backpack from the coat closet, and rushes into the hallway, down the staircase, running as fast and as far as he can when he can’t think, when he can’t _breathe_.

“Ben, wait!”

Rey followed him outside, still dressed only in a drenched sweater, long enough to cover any sight of her panties. She’s shivering, hair soaked flat against her face, barefoot and sobbing in the rain.

“Let me explain! Please—”

He rounds on her, doesn’t even think before he pushes her against the brick wall. “Why? You’re kicking me out, aren’t you? So I might as well go.”

She bites her lip, looks up at him with swollen eyes, her lashes wet with tears and rain. “I’m trying to do the right thing by you. This is hurting you. I can see that it’s hurting you, and I—” Rey looks down, and he knows that whatever is coming next will be awful. “I don’t feel the same way you do, Ben, and you deserve better than to be strung along.”

“Strung along?” He leans closer, bows low enough that he could kiss her mouth if he wanted to. If she wanted him to. “You’ve tied me up into knots, wrapped me around your little finger. Do you really think there’s anything _right_ left that we can do here?”

She tilts her head back, angling her lips a shade nearer to his own, showing her throat to him, like prey.

“I love you,” Ben says, and finally, the words are out. He’s free of carrying them around like a weight on his shoulders, growing heavier each day they go unspoken.

Rey only nods, then whispers, “I know.”

It’s not her rejection that hurts the most. That, at least, he saw coming. It’s the softness in Rey’s eyes, the cloak of her pity that settles over him, that hits hardest.

He kisses her, presses her against the wall more roughly, taking her mouth and caging her body with his own so that, at least in this way, he can be the one in control. Bigger and stronger, with the power to make her whimper and kiss back and moan. To quiver under his roaming hands—

Rey pushes him. She isn’t strong enough to throw him off of her, but Ben still backs away.

They watch each other. Rey cries so hard that her chest heaves, and the rain keeps falling, the heavens keep roiling with a spring storm. Indiscriminate, unmoved by the display below them.

When Ben walks away, he doesn’t look back.

.

.

.

**SONG OF SOLOMON 5:6**

_I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer._

—

His faded faith must be written all over him, because Pastor Snoke asks him flat-out in the middle of June, “Do you even believe anymore, Ben?”

This is the time to lie, to claim a faith he’s been leaving by the wayside for years, inch by inch, verse by verse. Lying would protect him, secure his final year of school, keep a roof over his head.

He thinks of blood on the bathroom floor, and his father’s last breath—the one that he looked away from, the one he missed, because he’s a coward. He thinks of Rey, crying in the rain, throwing him aside like trash. If he’s learned anything, it’s that there are many ways to give up, and some hurt more than others. But this one isn’t going to hurt at all.

“No,” Ben says. “I don’t believe in any of it, and I don’t think I ever really did. I just wanted to be free of my grief, and you dangled the Word over me like a worm over a hungry fish. So I took it.”

Suddenly Pastor Snoke’s wholesome face turns into something ugly, low, and foul. The scar across his cheek stands out, white and twisted with the sneer around his mouth. For the first time, Ben thinks he must have earned that mark.

“I thought you were the son I never had,” Snoke says. “But you’re just as much a disappointment to me as you were to your father.”

Ben punches him, and it feels good, it feels so satisfying, to finally hit this man back.

Snoke barely flinches, but it isn’t his pain that Ben wants anyway. Just the simple act of reclaiming himself, of taking back a small measure of the power that he handed over—no, that Snoke _took_ from him.

The pastor touches his mouth, and it comes away bloody. “Get out, and don’t ever show your face here again.”

“Don’t worry,” Ben says. “I won’t.”

—

There aren’t a lot of resources for homeless twenty-somethings in Cottontown. After Snoke sent him away, he walked around for two days with nothing but the clothes on his back. All of his money came from Snoke, and he hates to spend even the thirty-two dollars in his pocket on food.

His mother’s house is so close. He could walk there in no time, he could say that he left the church and beg to come home. But he doesn’t have any right to that home, doesn’t have any right to her forgiveness, even if she’d grant it.

He borrows a stranger’s phone while he’s shopping for bread and bologna at Walmart, dials his mom’s number, then hangs up before it can ring. He calls Rey after that, and even though he doesn’t expect her to pick up, it still hurts when she doesn’t answer.

Ben smiles at the little blue-haired lady who let him borrow her ten-year-old flip phone, thanks her, and leaves the shop without buying anything.

—

The summer heat is a new hell, the kind that almost makes Ben believe in the devil again. Every day is a fresh exercise in heat exhaustion, so he finds the coolest places to lurk. Shaded park benches, the community center, under the red-striped flower shop awning.

Mrs. Miller, the shop’s owner, gives him ice water and invites him inside whenever he likes. Ben uses her bathroom to wash up with hand soap, but he knows he still looks ragged and dirty. He won’t repay Mrs. Miller’s kindness by lingering in her shop, driving away customers.

He goes to the Hope Center at the beginning of July, and when he explains the situation with Pastor Snoke, they agree that it’s terrible, just terrible, that a man of God would do such a thing.

Ben shrugs. “I would’ve run away if he hadn’t kicked me out first.”

_I’m good at running away._

The women at the center help him find an apartment by the middle of July, and the first night he sleeps inside, cradled on an air-mattress in a cool bedroom, he almost cries.

The next day, when he brings Mrs. Miller a box of chocolates as a thank you gift, she offers him a job.

Working at the shop is easy enough for Ben. He’s always been meticulous, attuned to the fine details of things, whether it’s the nuances of a religious text or the careful pitch of Rey’s cries as he drew her closer to coming. That pays off once his days are consumed by caring for and arranging flowers. Mrs. Miller teaches him that too much baby’s breath only makes arrangements look tacky, the meaning of flowers is useless information unless you’re trying to sell Valentine’s arrangements or guilt-roses, and no, carnations never stop smelling like funerals.

August comes, and August goes, taking the start of a new semester at Litton with it.

—

His mother walks into the empty flower shop on September 29th at exactly one o’clock in the afternoon, and Ben knows he’ll remember this day for the rest of his life. It’s going to be tucked away in his memory for safekeeping, like flowers between the pages of a Bible.

She doesn’t see him at first, too busy examining a display of white roses, so Ben takes a moment to watch her. Her long dark braid is streaked with silver now, the fine lines by her eyes more prominent. She looks as beautiful as ever, but older. Of course she does; it’s been three years, eight months, and six days since they last saw each other. Not that he allowed himself to count, until recently.

“Mom…”

It chokes out of him before he even means to say anything, but she turns immediately, her brown eyes going wide, wider, then glassy with tears. She doesn’t let them fall, though. His mother has never been an easy crier, not like him.

“Ben?”

It stings to hear so much reservation in her voice, hope colored by disbelief, by mourning.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he says.

Ben steps around the counter, gripping its edge to keep himself steady. His mom walks over, holds out her hands, trembling, tentative, and asks, “Can I hug you?”

It isn’t until he has her wrapped in his arms that Ben realizes how much he’s missed this, missed _her_.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Mom, please—”

He doesn’t even know what he means to say. _Don’t hate me? Still love me? Let me come home?_ It doesn’t matter, because she burrows closer, and buries her head against his chest. Was she always this tiny, this delicate?

They finally fall away from the embrace, but then his mother stands up on the tips of her toes to cup his face between her hands. “You’re so tall,” she says, crying now, finally crying like he is. “When did you get so tall?”

Once they’ve (mostly) managed to let go of each other, Ben locks up the shop, calls Mrs. Miller to tell her what happened, and follows his mom to her car. His voice is stuck in his throat all the way back to Peachtree Street, and as soon as they reach the house, he almost starts crying again. His mom repainted the siding from white to a soft, sunny yellow, and there’s a garden around the porch now. It’s his house, but not as he remembers it.

There are a few cars parked in the driveway and on the lawn around it, one that he recognizes as his grandmother’s, another that he thinks might belong to his godparents, Bail and Breha.

“What’s everyone doing here?” he asks.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t even think to tell you. The family gets together on the last Friday of every month now, sweetheart. After you left—well I thought it might be a good idea for all of us to stay close.”

Before Ben can figure out what to say, his mom smiles at him, as warmly as if no time has passed at all. “Come on. It’s the perfect day for you to come home.”

—

His grandmother sobs for ten minutes straight and won’t let go of him until Mom says, “All right, give him a chance to breathe. Don’t want to run him off again.”

Ben laughs, more out of shock than good humor, but he’s thankful that there’s so little his mother finds too sacred to make fun of.

“This is a day for family, Ben,” Uncle Luke says, smiling. “Once you’ve had some time to let that sink in, it might be good for you to think about it.”

Ben hugs Uncle Luke once more, then his cousin Finn and Breha, then his mother. He can’t get enough of pulling her close, smelling the comforting floral scent of her perfume, one thing that’s still the same after all this time.

The house is loud and boisterous, overwhelming but beautiful. Once, the noise would have bothered him, but now he doesn’t care. Through the laughter and the music and hollering from one room to another, all Ben hears is joy. A home full of joy, when he needed it most, and he can only be thankful for his family’s warmth and grace.

Maybe Luke isn’t wrong. Being here, today of all days, makes him believe for the first time in a long while that something greater than himself could be at work.

—

That night, after everyone else has gone home, Ben stays up until the early hours of the morning, talking with his mother. He tells her about living with Pastor Snoke. About college and Rey, and feeling lost without her. Most of all, though, they remember Dad together.

When dawn starts creeping through the windows, warming the kitchen with golden light, his mom says, “He’d be proud of you, Ben. So proud.”

They laugh and cry and laugh again, and this is it, he thinks. This is what he needed all along. Time for the sharp edges of his grief to wear down, and someone to share this with, the burden of love cut short. There’s no magic cure for loss, but he can do this. He can keep going.

—

Ben is lying in his childhood bed, listening to morning birdsong outside his window, when he finally calls Rey.

She answers on the second ring. He doesn’t even get through a greeting before she says, “Ben! Where the hell are you? I’ve been worried out of my mind. First you don’t answer my calls, then you never show up at school? I’ve—I didn’t know what—I was afraid you’d hurt yourself.”

Rey takes three shuddering breaths, and he thinks she might be trying not to hyperventilate.

He sits up, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his head, and holds out his hands. Then he feels stupid. It’s not like he can touch her from here.

“It’s all right, I’m all right. Now, anyway. I’m home—with my mom, I mean, and—”

“I lied,” Rey says. The words come out in a rush, like she’s been holding them in since the last time they spoke, letting honesty fester in some hidden corner of her heart.

“Lied about what?” Ben asks.

He can hear her mouth opening, the start of her voice, trembling over the line. It gives him the illusion that she’s close enough to kiss, despite the distance between them.

“I told you that I don’t feel the same way you do,” she says. “I lied.”

They spend all morning on the phone, talking through hard truths and simple ones. Being together, truly together, won’t be easy. But this time, they agree that it’s a risk worth taking.

.

.

.

**HEBREWS 11:1**

_Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen._

—

That afternoon, Ben goes to the creek behind his house. His mother would probably find this silly, but he’s always found more meaning in ritual than she does. He takes off his socks and shoes, rolls his pants up to his knees, and walks into the hungry water.

Ben wants to cast off this person he’s been for the last eight years: arrogant and selfish, whether devout or doubtful. He’s done this once before, stepped into living water in the hopes that it might wash him clean, but this is different. Today, Ben isn’t running away. Today, he’s walking toward something.

He looks up, unsure of who he’s speaking to, or if anyone is even listening, but certain for once that it doesn’t matter. “Hi,” he says. “It’s been awhile.”

.

.

.

_fin_


End file.
